This paper discusses the merits of wealth transfer taxation on both efficiency and equity grounds. It first deals with the popular debate that is dominated by American economists. This debate concerns the US estate tax, which is one, among many, types of wealth transfer tax. After addressing the...

We analyze the problem of choosing the most appropriate method for apportioning taxes in a democracy. We consider a simple theoretical model of taxation and restrict our attention to piece-wise linear tax methods, which are almost ubiquitous in advanced democracies world- wide. We show that if...

We analyze the determinants of the demand for social, private and self-insurance for long-term care in an environment where agents differ in income, probability of becoming dependent and of receiving family help. Uniform social benefits are financed with a proportional income tax and are thus...

Despite the fact that all developed economies levy broadly-based indirect taxes alongside direct taxes, little theory is devoted to explaining the direct-indirect tax mix. Our purpose is to show that if different taxes have different evasion characteristics, some optimal tax mix emerges...

This paper addresses the question of the optimal taxation of labour and interest income in an overlapping generations model with two unobservable characteristics, ability and inheritance. We assume realistically that saving can only be taxed anonymously, whereas the tax on labour earnings can be...

This paper studies the role of family size in the design of optimal income taxation. We consider a second best setting where the government observes the number of children and the income of the parents but not their productivity.

This paper extends the Atkinson-Stiglitz model of direct and indirect taxation to a dynamic setting with two unobservable characteristics: productive ability and inherited wealth.Bequests are motivated by the "joy of giving".

In a model where agents have unequal production skills and different preferences, we build social welfare functions which rely only on ordinal non-comparable information on individual preferences. Social welfare functions are required to satisfy properties of compensation for inequalities in...

Multinational companies can shift profit and income between branches in order to reduce the overall tax liabilities of the company. The result is a tax competition between countries. In this paper we consider the sequential choice of tax rates to illustrate the potential effects of tax...

In the postal sector, the net cost of universal service depends on the content of the service, the postal market characteristics and the country’s geographical configuration. These three groups of factors affect both the direct cost of providing the service and the extent of competition on the...